The Sai Mizzi Charity Appeal: Pillows and Sheets for a Starving Minister’s Wife

Mrs Konrad Mizzi’s contract with Mario Vella of Malta Enterprise stipulates that she is entitled to a “fully-expensed house excluding pillows and linen”.

We at Running Commentary think this is extremely unfair. The contract says that the government of Malta/Malta Enterprise is to pay for some of her clothes so that she can look suitably smart and convey an appropriate image (presumably as smart and appropriate as her boss Mario Vella’s).

So why are they refusing to pay for her sheets, pillows and possibly also towels and kitchen towels?

This is very wrong. It must be as she said, because she is Chinese (despite actually being Maltese) and we are mean to her because we are a bunch of anti-Chinese racists.

Not, of course, because she is a government minister’s wife who has had herself appointed abusively to a non-existent government position with a package of Eur13,000 a month.

She doesn’t know that this kind of thing isn’t considered normal or acceptable in Europe, though it is in China, and that criticising it and mocking it publicly and in the press is normal and acceptable in Europe, though it isn’t in China. So she has been holding back tears in interviews while probably soaking her pillows and sheets at home.

We do not wish to see Mrs Konrad Mizzi deprived of pillows and sheets. So we are starting a charity drive here. Spare some change for pillows and sheets, throw in some towels if you can, and drop them off at her husband’s office: the Ministry for Energy and Health, the Auberge de Castille, Valletta.

(And if the Nationalist Party had any sense of what makes for a massively successful tactic that picks up on the public mood – remember how all the Labour MPs turned up to parliament wearing the scarves of the finance minister’s favourite football team? – this is exactly what it would have done itself, but of course, did not. Yes, the PN should have bought a consignment of sheets and pillows and arranged to have them delivered to Konrad Mizzi’s office during a press call.)

If you wish to arrange for collection, please ring the energy minister’s communications coordinator Lindsey Gambin – who you will possibly know from years of watching her report negativity and propaganda for the Labour Party’s TV station Super One – on 2200 2551. You’ll have to hold, though, because they’re generally literally out to lunch.